Thursday, 26 February 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - In what is being heralded as a huge victory for net neutrality and the preservation of an open Internet with even the unusual urging of President Obama and the voices of millions of Americans deluging Washington, D.C. the F.C.C. today voted 3-2 along party lines to reclassify high-speed Internet service as a telecommunications rather than an information service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act which therefore means it is treated as a public utility.
The F.C.C. net neutrality rules expected to be available within a couple of days but not effective for a couple of months in addition to regulating wired lines also will encompass mobile data service for smartphones and tablets. The rules further will include provisions for the protection of consumer privacy as well as ensuring internet service for people with disabilities and in remote areas.
The new rules will not adopt Title II provisions wholesale but will leave companies to make their own pricing and engineering network management decisions. Nevertheless the rules will pre-empt state laws that limit the buildout of municipal broadband Internet services focusing today on North Carolina and Tennessee although expected to establish a framework for all states including a total of 21 states that the F.C.C. counts currently as having laws limiting the activities of community broadband services.
The latter has been an area of particular emphasis by President Obama even sitting on his desk demonstrating on his tablet the result of foresight by a few smaller American municipalities that started the buildout of their own broadband internet early on and whose citizens now enjoy internet speeds of about 100 times that of most major American cities. Perhaps ironically of the major cities shown by the President in a bar graph San Francisco fell by far in last place with the slowest internet speed.
In President Obama's unusual public input into the F.C.C.'s independent decision the President also overall urged the "strongest possible rules" for net neutrality specifically urging the Commission to reclassify high-speed broadband Internet service as a utility as "[f]or most Americans, the internet has become an essential part of everyday communication and everyday life," according to today's New York Times article linked to below.
The F.C.C. net neutrality decision today resulted from the votes in favor by the three Democrats on the Commission being Chairman Tom Wheeler and fellow commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel. Chairman Wheeler said the F.C.C. was doing everything in its power to protect innovators and consumers and preserve the Internet as a "core of free expression and democratic principles." The remaining two Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly delivered a "scathing critique" of today's F.C.C. decision as overly broad, vague and unnecessary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-vote-internet-utility.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to Mark Wilson / Getty Images photo)
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